Mance Lipscomb

Wikipedia - "Mance Lipscomb (April 9, 1895 – January 30, 1976) was an influential blues singer, guitarist and songster. Born Beau De Glen Lipscomb near Navasota, Texas, he as a youth took the name of 'Mance' from a friend of his oldest brother Charlie (Mance short for emancipation)."
Wikipedia, Famous Texans, YouTube - Jack of Spades, Can I Do Something, Ain't It Hard, All night long, See See Rider, Going down slow

Frank Selby

"ppoollooccee", 2009
"Most of my current work is based upon miscommunications, failures of communication and gaps in communication. Any conflict between people is always a linguistic entanglement and I work with versions of these dialogues and problematize them further. The images of riots, wars, uprisings and clashes found in my work are approached as instances of groups of people for whom a failure of language has created a crisis."
Frank Selby, Frank Selby at Gallery Jeanroch Dard

Clanking, Ponderous Rheingold: The Met's New Valhalla Machine

Robert Lepage
"What is it about the works of Richard Wagner that consistently inspire some of the most bizarre productions in all of opera? No doubt it is because Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (1848–1874) poses the nearly impossible challenge of making this monumental four-part music drama accord with ever-shifting notions of the mythic, which change as much as any other fashions."
NYR, NY Times - The Valhalla Machine, ARTINFO - Metropolitan Opera’s Valhalla Machine for Das Rheingold Disappoints, Wikipedia - Der Ring des Nibelungen

Philip Scott Johnson

"This is a video created by Philip Scott Johnson, who is a digital artist from St. Louis, Missouri. The amazing morphing animation is a video montage of famous Hollywood film entertainers through the years."
YouTube - Women In Film, Men In Film, Van Gogh, Women In Art, Famous masters, YouTube - Philip Scott Johnson

Scott Jordan

"I have been digging for New York's artifacts since 1969. My first dig was on Governor's Island, which was my father's duty station, and I stumbled upon a time capsule of New York's military history in the moat of old Fort Jay. In the dirt under the old drawbridge were relics dating from the War of 1812 all the way to the Civil War including buttons, musket balls and bullets, coins, pottery, and even a small cannon ball."
Urban archaeologist Scott Jordan, vimeo - Digging The Past

Harry Everett Smith

Wikipedia - "Harry Everett Smith (29 May 1923, Portland, Oregon – 27 November 1991, New York City) was an American archivist, ethnomusicologist, student of anthropology, record collector, experimental filmmaker, artist, bohemian and mystic. Smith is a well-known figure in several fields."
Wikipedia, Harry Everett Smith, History Link, YouTube - "Early Abstractions" (1946-57), Pt. 1, Pt. 2, Pt. 3, Pt. 4, Film #10: Mirror Animations (1957), Harry Smith's 11 (-1/3). Harry Smith & Angel Orensanz

Sun Ra on Artbeat

"WTTW, Channel 11's ARTBEAT piece on Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn & Chicago's Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954-68, at the Hyde Park Art Center, October 2007, Curated by John Corbett, Anthony Elms, and Terri Kapsalis"
YouTube - Sun Ra on Artbeat

Joyce Kozloff

Boys' Art #2: Nagasaki
"Joyce Kozloff is a painter commonly associated with the Pattern & Decoration movement of the 1970s. The movement was an effort to challenge the stigma that modern art had put on ornamentation. The artists of this movement drew inspiration form arts and cultures outside the mainstream of modern art: Islamic, Celtic, and Arts and Crafts."
Layers of Meaning, artnet

The Poet's View -- John Ashbery

"I always wanted to go to France, ever since I was a child and read French fairy tales and writers like Balzac and Proust. It was just a thing I always wanted to do and ended up doing."
Poets

Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band

Wikipedia - "Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band is a pioneering American soul and funk band. Formed in the early 1960s, they had the most visibility from 1967 to 1973 when the band had 9 singles reach Billboard's pop and/or rhythm and blues Hot 100 lists...."
Wikipedia, last.fm, YouTube - Express Yourself, Do Your Thing, Soul A Go Go

Seen on the Streets Of Basel, Switzerland

"Bustart was born in 1983 in Switzerland. His goal is to affect and touch. Be it surface or oppinions."
Wooster Collective, Bustart

Water Yam - George Brecht

Wikipedia - "Water Yam is an artist's book by the American artist George Brecht. Originally published in Germany, June 1963 in a box designed by George Maciunas and typeset by Tomas Schmit, it has been re-published in various different countries several times since. It is now considered one of the most influential artworks released by Fluxus, the internationalist avant-garde art movement active predominantly in the sixties and seventies."
Wikipedia, Leeds University Library, The Idea of the Book

Fela Kuti - Documentary

Larry Birnbaum, Spin. "...chicken-scratch guitar, vamping organ, massed brass, female chorus, jazzy horn solos, layered drumming—and antiestablishment doggerel..."
YouTube - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Claudio Bravo

Wikipedia - "Claudio Bravo (November 8, 1936 in Valparaíso) is a Chilean hyperrealist painter. He has lived and worked in Tangier, Morocco since 1972."
Wikipedia, artnet, Marlborough Gallery, Google

The Hardy Boys

Wikipedia - "The Hardy Boys, Frank and Joe Hardy, are fictitous teenage brothers and amateur detectives who appear in various mystery series for teens. The characters were created by Edward Stratemeyer, the founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, a book-packaging firm, and the books have been written by many different ghostwriters over the years. The books are published under the collective pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon. The Hardy Boys have evolved in various ways since their first appearance in 1927. Beginning in 1959, the books were extensively revised, largely to eliminate racist stereotypes."
Wikipedia

Robert Kuśmirowski

Migros, 2007
Wikipedia - "Robert Kuśmirowski (born 1973 in Łódź), is a Polish contemporary artist who's work includes sculpture, installations, performance and photography. His work uses reconstruction of historical artefacts and settings to examine and manipulate historical themes. He lives and works in Lublin."
Wikipedia, frieze, Machines from a past that never was, The Barbican's Curve Gallery transformed into a World War II bunker, Guardian - Artist of the week 63: Robert Kusmirowski, YouTube - Bunker, YouTube - Robert Kusmirowski - Visual Artist/Sound Builder, veoh - Migros Museum Zurich / part 1/2, veoh - Migros Museum Zurich / part 2/2

Silvio Rodríguez

Wikipedia - "Silvio Rodríguez Domínguez (born November 29, 1946 in San Antonio de los Baños) is a Cuban musician, and a leader of the nueva trova movement. He is considered Cuba's best known folk singer and known for his highly eloquent and symbolic lyrics. ... Rodríguez, musically and politically, is a symbol of the Latin American left wing. Several of his songs praise the revolutionary figure Che Guevara and he is also currently a 'deputy' (or minister) in the Cuban parliament. His lyrics are notably introspective. His songs combine romanticism, love (even eroticism), revolutionary politics, and idealism."
Wikipedia, last.fm, YouTube - Ojalá, Y Nada Mas, Sonrisas de papel, Te amaré, Por quien merece amor, Solo el amor, En estos dias,

NYFF 2010: The 48th New York Film Festival

"Since 1963, The New York Film Festival has continued to bring new and important cinematic works by filmmakers from around the world. The Festival includes Main Slate selections along with special events, panel discussions, the experimental film showcase Views from the Avant-Garde, and much more."
NYFF 2010, MUBI

Garage rock

Wikipedia - "Garage rock is a raw form of rock and roll that was first popular in the United States and Canada from about 1963 to 1967. During the 1960s, it was not recognized as a separate music genre and had no specific name. In the late 1970s, some rock critics retroactively identified it as an early incarnation of punk rock, and it is sometimes called garage punk, protopunk, or 1960s punk; however, the music style has predominantly been referred to as garage rock."
Wikipedia, W - List of garage rock bands

Art Inconnu

Le Peril Jeune, 1906
"Collected here are works by artists who are forgotten, under appreciated, or little known to the mainstream. There is incredible quality to be found out there beyond the big name artists in the big shows, whether it is one exceptional painting, one area of an artists oeuvre, or an entire career worth re-examining. The focus here is primarily painting by 19th and 20th century artists but everything is fair game."
Art Inconnu.
Reading, Some Women Painters, Chess, The World in Miniature, Weather: Snow, Motherhood

Reggae History

Channel One
"Popular music of Jamaican origin having elements of Calypso and rhythm and blues, usually with an accent placed on the offbeat."
YouTube - Reggae History, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Times Square

Wikipedia - "Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets. The extended Times Square area, also called the Theatre District, consists of the blocks between Sixth and Eighth Avenues from east to west, and West 40th and West 53rd Streets from south to north, making up the western part of the commercial area of Midtown Manhattan."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Times Square 2010 New Years Celebration

Michaël Borremans

Wikipedia - "Michaël Borremans (born 1963) is a Belgian painter and filmmaker. He paints portraits of somber young men."
Wikipedia, David Zwirner, ZENO X GALLERY, YouTube - Michaël Borremans

Indeterminacy - John Cage

"John Cage was an American composer, Zen buddhist, and mushroom eater. He was also a writer: this site is about his paragraph-long stories – anecdotes, thoughts, and jokes. As a lecture, or as an accompaniment to a Merce Cunningham dance, he would read them aloud, speaking quickly or slowly as the stories required so that one story was read per minute. This site archives 190 of those stories. Each story is spaced out, as if it were being read aloud, to fill a fixed area. If you like, you can also read them aloud at a rate of one a minute."
A B O U T I N D E T E R M I N A C Y, Indeterminacy - John Cage, Dangerous Minds, amazon - Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music

Stones: Larry Rivers and Frank O’Hara

"For the book Stones, Rivers and O'Hara jumped in with an enthusiasm and lack of experience that gave them freedom to experiment. Together they created an intimate dialogue, starting each print with individual titles and then responding to each other's imagery and words."
MoMA, TATE, Buffalo

Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback

Wikipedia - "Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback is a 2006 film directed by Dietmar Post and Lucia Palacios about the seminal German-American beat band The Monks." (Erik B.)
Wikipedia, amazon, Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback, The Monks, YouTube - Monk Anthology, YouTube - trailer, The Monks on Chic-A-Go-Go, Oh, How to Do Now, Shut Up, Drunken Maria, I hate you, Boys are boys and girls are girls

Obscure No. 5 - Jan Steele / John Cage

"Brian Eno's Obscure Records label released only 10 albums during its existence from 1975 through 1978. Some of these have been reissued on CD (among them Eno's own 1975 masterpiece Discreet Music), but for some reason the album Voices and Instruments (Obscure No. 5, 1976) only exists on out-of-print vinyl. It is a very quiet and beautiful record, featuring three compositions by Jan Steele on one side, and five compositions by John Cage on the other side."
UbuWeb

The Beatles - The German Songs

"On 29 January 1964 in a Paris recording studio, the Beatles recorded two of their hit songs in German. The instrumental music tracks were the original ones used for the English recordings, but the German lyrics had been hurriedly written by a Luxembourger named Camillo Felgen (Camille Jean Nicolas Felgen, 1920-2005)."
About, German Beatles Sing, YouTube - Sie liebt dich, Komm Gib Mir Deine Hand, Geht raus (Jan 1969), The Beatles In Germany 1960-1962 (The Early Years)

Henry Cow Concerts - 1976

Wikipedia - "Henry Cow Concerts is a live double album by English avant-rock group Henry Cow, recorded at concerts in London, Italy, the Netherlands and Norway between September 1974 and October 1975. Sides one and two of the LP record consist of composed material while sides three and four contain improvised pieces."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Henry Cow - Terrible as an army with banners, Beautiful as the Moon, No More Songs

Op-Ed at 40, A Brief History of the Art

Barbara Kruger
"Yesterday’s New York Times celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the op-ed section. Part of the commemoration is a video dedicated to the influential illustrations of the op-ed section."
Columbia University, NY Times - Op-Ed at 40, A Brief History of the Art

Blue Note Records

Wikipedia - "Blue Note Records is a jazz record label, established in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis. Francis Wolff became involved shortly afterwards. It derives its name from the characteristic 'blue notes' of jazz and the blues."
Wikipedia, Blue Note Records, amazon

Sampling

Damian Marley & Nas collaborating & sampling african music
Wikipedia - "In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song. The wide spread use of sampling in popular music originated with the birth of hip hop music in New York in the 1970s. This is typically done with a sampler, which can be a piece of hardware or a computer program. Sampling is also possible with tape loops or with vinyl records on a phonograph."
Wikipedia, YouTube - The Art Of Sampling Pt.1, 9TH WONDER INTERVIEW: The Art of Sampling, Sampling Weapons of Choice, The Art Of Sampling 1, The Art Of Sampling 2, etc.

May 1968 in France

Wikipedia - "The May 1968 protest refers to a particular period in French history. During this time, the country saw the largest general strike that resulted in the economy coming to a virtual standstill, the first of its kind for an advanced industrial country. It was also the first wildcat general strike in history and involved a series of student occupation protests. The strike involved eleven million workers for a continuous two weeks, and its impact was such that it almost caused the collapse of President Charles de Gaulle's government."
Wikipedia

The Trip (1967)

Wikipedia - "The Trip (1967) is a low-budget cult film released by American International Pictures, directed by Roger Corman, and shot on location in and around Los Angeles, including on top of Kirkwood in Laurel Canyon, Hollywood Hills, and near Big Sur, California in 1966. Peter Fonda stars as a young television commercial director, Paul Groves."
Wikipedia, YouTube - The Trip, Dennis Hopper & Peter Fonda, The Electric Flag - M-23 (The Trip Soundtrack)

Brian Eno, H.Budd: The Plateaux of Mirror

"Music by Brian Eno, H.Budd Album:The Plateaux of Mirror. First Light. This video takes the point of view of a fly flying in cigarette smoke."
YouTube - First Light, Wind in lonely fences, Above Chiangmai, Steal away, Not yet remembered, An arc of doves